Freeeeeedoooooooooooom!!

By  on  

One gangsta policy used by many domain registrars is to hold on to a domain for months after its expiration for "convenience and security purposes." Sure. Right. Uh huh.

One such registrar is the shady corporation called Network Solutions. Network Solutions is as evil of a domain registrar as there is. We've seen much evidence of that within the past few months.

I've had a keen eye on the domain DAVID-WALSH.COM for quite a while. Week after week, every WHOIS lookup I made resulted in a "Pending Deletion" message. I'd only been checking about once a week so as not arouse too much attention from NetSol.

Last week, the domain was finally cut free. It only took a few months. Anyways, the domain is now mine, all mine!

Have you had any issue with Network Solutions, or am I the only one? Share your experience.

Recent Features

  • By
    Create Namespaced Classes with MooTools

    MooTools has always gotten a bit of grief for not inherently using and standardizing namespaced-based JavaScript classes like the Dojo Toolkit does.  Many developers create their classes as globals which is generally frowned up.  I mostly disagree with that stance, but each to their own.  In any event...

  • By
    Vibration API

    Many of the new APIs provided to us by browser vendors are more targeted toward the mobile user than the desktop user.  One of those simple APIs the Vibration API.  The Vibration API allows developers to direct the device, using JavaScript, to vibrate in...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Chris Coyier’s Favorite CodePen Demos II

    Hey everyone! Before we get started, I just want to say it's damn hard to pick this few favorites on CodePen. Not because, as a co-founder of CodePen, I feel like a dad picking which kid he likes best (RUDE). But because there is just so...

  • By
    Upload Photos to Flickr with PHP

    I have a bit of an obsession with uploading photos to different services thanks to Instagram. Instagram's iPhone app allows me to take photos and quickly filter them; once photo tinkering is complete, I can upload the photo to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and...

Discussion

  1. MH

    Hi David,

    The “pending deletion” period for a domain name is governed by ICANN and the gTLD Registries (for .COM and .NET domains, that would be Verisign), not by Registrars like Network Solutions.

    For a diagram of the lifecycle of an Internet domain name, see: http://www.icann.org/registrars/gtld-lifecycle.htm

    -MH

  2. Thank you for the explanation MH. I was probably harsh to blame this on NetSol, but I hadn’t seen it before.

    I will say I’ve had quite bad experiences with them though. Thanks for clearing that up!

  3. Hmmm… never had a problem yet with NetSol. Congrats on getting your desired domain name, though. You aren’t moving again are you? ;)

  4. No, not moving again. The first time was too much of a pain!

  5. my friend just stumbled on their site last March 2. and got her domain under their ‘hostage’ just minutes after then, and she had to keep a guard on the domain since that day.

    I will ask her again whether her chosen domain has been released or not, for this is already the fifth day and they claimed it was up to 4 days. we will see …

  6. Aaron S.

    Network Solutions is indeed evil.

    Several years ago, before I knew anything, I decided I wanted to transfer my domain away from netsol. A buddy of mine gave me bad advice. “Just backorder it with godaddy,” he said, as the domain was about to expire. So I backordered it and let it expire.

    The next thing I knew, some shady company had snatched it right up and charged me $150 to get it back. :( Later I did some research and discovered that shady domain snatcher was actually some subsidiary of Network Solutions.

    I’ve hated them ever since. Needless to say, I no longer have any domains registered there and I learned how to do proper domain transfers.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!